Comment by 082349872349872

5 years ago

a book on authoritarian followers, which (at least when I'd read it pre-2016[1]) had some surprising-to-me suggestions for deradicalisation: https://theauthoritarians.org (pp. 240-245, by numbering, not by pdf page)

Bonus fable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King

[1] in its current incarnation, it, like much of the world, may have become obssessed with a particular authoritarian leader. I hope not. Pages 240-245 seem to be as I remembered. See https://theauthoritarians.org if you wish to see how it's currently positioned.

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082349872349872

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scottlocklin  5 years ago

I read the bits you listed, then had to scan back to figure out what "RWA" means. Correct me if I am wrong, but this book seems to have recycled the ridiculous Theodore Adorno/Frankfurt school nonsense pathologizing Christian Western civilization. The entire idea that people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses, rather than the defective WEIRD[0] emotional pattern that literally only appears in some fraction of highly educated Westerners seems .... a bit questionable. I'd posit that "RWA" is a contradiction in terms in the sense it seems to be used.

I mean I get where Adorno was coming from: a bunch of seemingly normal people had just massacred a bunch of his cousins. That doesn't mean I have to take his insane response seriously; particularly when current year WEIRD non-authoritarians so casually massacre members of neurotypical civilizations[1]. The persistence with which people cling to this nonsense indicates it must scratch some psychological itch. It is, however, nonsense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias

[1] I dunno, nobody seems to give a shit we've been blowing up "barbarians" in the middle east for the last 20 years in hopes of making them more .... tolerant.

  • 082349872349872  5 years ago

    Adorno sounds familiar, so you're probably right about the source influence. I recall RWA being distinct from "people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses", so I'll check that later and leave it here in an edit.

    Agreed on the middle east situation, but I've written elsewhere on HN about the catch-22 that I believe has produced a Baptists and Bootleggers dynamic in what Orwell would call the disputed territories.

    Edit: the RWA score is from a survey on pp11-12.

        1.  The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just “loud mouths” showing off their ignorance.
    2.  Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married.
    3.  Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.
    4.  Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
    5.  It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubt in people’s minds
    6.  Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.
    7.  The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.
    8.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.
    9.  Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this upsets many people.
    10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.
    11. Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else.
    12. The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live.
    13. You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer.
    14. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.
    15. Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.”
    16. God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.
    17. There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action.
    18. A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past.
    19. Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything.
    20. There is no “ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way.
    21. Homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy “traditional family values.
    22. This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society.

    Responses given on a -4 to 4 scale, and after scoring the possible results are 20 to 180.

    Page 14 states: "Introductory psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90. Thus the Manitoba parent samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too."

    (as to church-going, about 400 of those 1000 sampled probably go to church on their relevant day of the week.)

    • scottlocklin  5 years ago

      Yeah, see, I don't think any of this has a single, solitary thing to do with "authoritarianism." It's just testing for normal human attitudes, rather than urban WEIRD attitudes.

      I'm doing "that internet guy" again, but it's necessary here; from m-w[0] the definition of "authoritarian"

      1: of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority had authoritarian parents

      2: of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

      There's nothing about our forefathers, homosexuals, feminists, theism, women, sexual preferences, pornography, sinfulness or any of the other bullshit in those questions that has a single, solitary thing to do with the definition of authoritarianism. Until the 1990s, most Americans, indeed most Westerners outside of (maybe) Holland and Sweden would have been considered "authoritarian" by those lights. Do you believe Westerners were "authoritarian" for all of human history until ... say, 1997 or whatever? I was alive back then: it was very obviously less authoritarian on almost every level. And mind you, I score fairly "non authoritarian" (aka not so conservative) on this test.

      Anyway, I appreciate your constructive engagement, but I am extremely allergic to bullshit which dehumanizes normal people. I mean, we decided as a society that dehumanizing gay people and feminists was bad: the reality is people who are don't think the last 10 years of modernity is an amazing success are not particularly authoritarian, but dehumanizing them absolutely is.

      [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritarian

      11 replies →

    • jfengel  5 years ago

      It feels weird that they'd pay any attention to the 100 midpoint. These questions feel like they're written to make the authoritarians look unreasonable. Which I feel they are, too, but the way it's written the only way to give the more authoritarian answer would be to be either truly delusional or performing as if one were.

      That doesn't mean it's useless, but it does mean that the midpoint is arbitrary. If nobody scores above 100 it says more about your test than it does about people.

      1 reply →

43423434  5 years ago

Do you think normalizing anti-white terms like "Karen," to the point that "respectable" outlets like the WaPo and NYT use them, or selectively capitalizing Black but not white when referring to race, as the AP (a supposedly unbiased outlet) recently committed to doing, or making white children like the Covington Kids targets of public hate campaigns for smiling while being harassed by minorities, or pushing to ban "hate speech" (which in practice just means white speech) help with deradicalization?

  • 082349872349872  5 years ago

    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795550 (and my followup tomorrow)

    I think (not being familiar with any of the above except for Karen[1]) you're mentioning US-specific culture war items which are orthogonal to the subject of the book, which are the sort of beliefs that lead "high RWA" followers to violently punish those their leaders have branded as Other.

    The book has to do more with the sort of 1940's beliefs that built and staffed Treblinka, or the sort of 1950's beliefs that lynched Emmett Till, or the sort of 1970's beliefs that led to people being pushed out of helicopters, than to the sorts of beliefs to which I believe you refer.

    [1] which I know of as a meme where melanin is incidental. Compare Scumbag Steve.